New data released on Wednesday suggests Research in Motion's PlayBook tablet has managed a ten percent increase in Canadian marketshare on substantial discounts, and has pulled the share of Apple's iPad down to 68 percent.

Citing market research data from Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, The Globe and Mail reports that market share of the oft-maligned PlayBook has risen to 15 percent of the Canadian market, but comes at the cost of discounts which equate to hundreds of dollars per unit.

The data, taken from a survey of 1,000 Canadians, illustrates that while RIM's share is but a fraction of the iPad's, the sharp rise in sales saw Apple's market presence drop from 86 percent to 68 percent since fall 2011. This steep decline also means that Android tablets have also shown growth during the period.

Despite critical reviews from bloggers and the media, RIM chose to stick with the PlayBook even as a the inability to sell units cost the company $485 million in earnings at the end of the holiday quarter.

In an attempt to salvage the device, RIM initiated a fire sale in November which slashed prices of the premium tablet by as much as $300, and continues to uphold the low cost in order to move product.

RIM's deep discounts have translated into a bump in Canadian market share. | Source: BlackBerry.com

A software update for the 7-inch tablet, dubbed PlayBook 2.0, is expected to be announced in the coming weeks and will bring much needed e-mail and calendar apps as well as the ability to type on the device using a BlackBerry handset's physical keyboard.

Let 'em keep selling the PlayBook at fire sale prices in which they make a few cents off of every tablet. It will only hasten the inevitable. The market has shown that yes, you can take market share away from the iPad IF you basically give your product away. Not exactly a sound business model in my uninformed opinion.

RIM is no Amazon. They can't sustain selling below cost for very long. This is probably just clearing out the inventory. Once it's all gone, owners are going to be stuck with an orphan device. Not that it has much support even now.

A software update for the 7-inch tablet, dubbed PlayBook 2.0, is expected to be announced in the coming weeks and will bring much needed e-mail and calendar apps as well as the ability to type on the device using a BlackBerry handset's physical keyboard.

This just tells me they don't give a crap at all about anything.

When was it that this first became common knowledge? Eight months ago or something? Eight months they've gone without an update to allow native e-mail on their device. Eight months where the thing has been absolutely worthless to everyone in its intended market.

The fact they didn't slave night and day for an entire month to push an e-mail client to the device right after it launched tells me they just don't care.

Canada must have a hella small market for RIM to have enough of these on hand to to affect market share. No igloo is complete without a RIM heating pad.

1/3 of the inventory was sold to construction companies for cheap fill, 1/3 of them were sold to the Brick for giveaways and only 1/3 of them went into consumers hands, of which half of those were bought as executive giveaways at Xmas.

When was it that this first became common knowledge? Eight months ago or something? Eight months they've gone without an update to allow native e-mail on their device. Eight months where the thing has been absolutely worthless to everyone in its intended market.

The fact they didn't slave night and day for an entire month to push an e-mail client to the device right after it launched tells me they just don't care.

Who the fk cares? They are practically giving them away and they are from a Canadian company so being purchased for national pride not rational choice. Canada is a country of only 34M people, just 6M more than the population of the city of Chongqing, China.

Who the fk cares? They are practically giving them away and they are from a Canadian company so being purchased for national pride not rational choice. Canada is a country of only 34M people, just 6M more than the population of the city of Chongqing, China.

You will be happy to know that every beaver in Canada will be getting a free Playbook. We pride ourselves in our national symbols. Up in Canada we have a saying for people who makes statements such as yours... "His toque is too tight."

I bought a Playbook. It is no iPad, but I wanted a 7 inch screen. It has few apps, can't stream Hulu or Netflix. No Skype, but there is a work around. But for $199, it will download and play movies that I have made for my iPad. It is smaller and that is what I wanted. Untill they come out with a la.rger iPod.Touch, this will do

This reminds me of being a kid, and asking for a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. I dropped so many damn hints to my parents. I told them about the best N64 games, the accessories, etc. So Christmas morning rolled around, I open up the big box, and it's a Sega CD. They went to the store to buy me the N64, but there was a big shiny "SALE" sticker on the Sega CD, so they bought that instead. It was fun for about a month, and then it became next-to-impossible to get games for it.

I anticipate buyer's remorse for a lot of those Playbook owners in about a month....

I bought a Playbook. It is no iPad, but I wanted a 7 inch screen. It has few apps, can't stream Hulu or Netflix. No Skype, but there is a work around. But for $199, it will download and play movies that I have made for my iPad. It is smaller and that is what I wanted. Untill they come out with a la.rger iPod.Touch, this will do

If I understand you right, you paid $200 for a 7" flat-screen TV that doesn't even have a DVD drive built in?

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge